


Triptych

by 221b_hound



Series: The Million Word Festival [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Christmas, Christmas Morning, Christmas Presents, Daddy Holmes is a sweetie, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Honeymoon, Kissing, Multi, Oaths & Vows, Oral Sex, Polyamory, SO MUCH FLUFF, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Sex, Wedding Rings, hand gags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:25:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is John, Mary and Sherlock's first Christmas together, but staying at Sherlock's parents' house on Christmas Eve, they're not together. John and Mary are in the guest room; Sherlock in his childhood bedroom. Turns out, nobody is really very happy with that. The remedy includes an early Christmas present for Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissDavis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDavis/gifts), [Moonflower75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonflower75/gifts).



> I seem to have really taken a shine to this Johnlockary business. I have a few ideas to explore with them, but will be doing other prompts shortly.
> 
> I will add characters and tags as required in the following chapters, but I promise, there will be smut. And Christmas jumpers.

Sherlock stretched out on his old, narrow bed with his ankles crossed, his hands clasped behind his head, and stared at the opposite wall. Blank now, the posters of Alfred Nobel and Marie Curie, Yehudi Menuhin and Anne-Sophie Mutter long gone. The framed elements chart and Ju Jitsu certificate now hung on his wall at Baker Street.

Or. Not his. _Theirs._

 _Their_ room. Mary and John had given up their flat and returned to Baker Street, and his room was now _their_ room and John’s room was the _spare_.

And here he was in his childhood home, in his childhood room, in his childhood bed, without Mary and John, who had been given the guest room and its queen sized bed, which would be a bit small for the three of them anyway.

Sherlock held his breath so that the sound of his own lungs wouldn’t interfere as he listened.

 _‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a spouse_.

 _Spouse._ Now _there_ was a word.

Sherlock frowned. He sat up straight and drew his robe closer around his body; folded his arms over his stomach, and drew his knees up. He should never have agreed to spend Christmas here at his parents’ home with Mycroft and his… his what? Lovers? Well, they _were_ his lovers, but they were more than that. Irretrievably more than that. Co-conspirators, certainly, especially now that Magnussen was dead. Especially now that Mary was pregnant. Partners, parents-to-be, lovers… but spouses? Perhaps. Regardless of legal paperwork, that was who they were now.

And here he was, all alone in in a narrow, lonely bed which he had finally outgrown, emotionally as well as physically, and just… no. Just _hell no._

Sherlock was only marginally aware of what he meant by that until he was on his feet, in his slippers, standing in the hall outside the guest room.

He paused, hand extended for the doorhandle, and listened to their voices.

‘I’m going to get him.’ John.

‘What about all this “we can’t share a bed at his parents’ house”?’ Mary, snarking him.

‘Fine. I freely admit I’m an idiot and an arsehole for ever saying it, and now, I’m going to get him. If he wants to maintain the proprieties he can say no’ – Mary snorted inelegant amusement at the notion – ‘But it’s our first Christmas together and I don’t want one third of our family thinking he has to sleep somewhere else. I’m going to get him.’

Sherlock smiled. John had taken days to convince that this could work, but once he’d had his little protest about ‘normal’, he had accepted that he was no more normal than Mary or Sherlock, though marginally better at faking it, and embraced the new reality with his whole heart, body and mind. He chose his battles, of course, as John always did. Sometimes he just needed a bit of time to adjust. Like his pre-holiday question about whether it was wise for them to share a room at the Holmes house, and Sherlock’s early capitulation rather than push it. To be fair to John, Sherlock had needed time to consider the implications as well.

‘ _We_ are going to get him.’ Mary’s amusement had transformed into approval; warmth; enthusiasm, even.

Sherlock opened the guest room door, slipped inside and shut the door silently behind him. Before he’d even turned towards them again, John’s arms were around his waist. Mary was at his side, grinning her devil grin at him, her hand on his shoulder and then caressing his cheek. He smirked back at her, and wrapped his arms over John’s around his middle.

‘Bed,’ he said curtly, ‘It’s freezing.’ He kicked off his slippers, threw his robe over John’s and Mary’s robes on the chair in the corner and clambered into the centre of the bed. John rolled his eyes at Mary, but he was grinning as he got in on Sherlock’s right; Mary on his left.

‘God, you weren’t kidding!’ griped John at Sherlock’s chilly feet and hands taking the warm edge off the sheets. He curled the arches of both his feet around Sherlock’s left foot and wriggled close, apparently intent on warming Sherlock up with the use of friction.

Sherlock, who had intended on just sleeping, found that his cock had woken up.

Mary smiled at him, that mischievous quirk to the corner of her lips and in the crinkling of her eyes. She propped herself up on one elbow, ran the arch of one foot lazily down his right shin, and rested her hand over his diaphragm.

‘Hey there,’ she said, ‘We missed you.’

John had nuzzled into Sherlock’s neck now, and was kissing Sherlock’s throat and jaw, then his cheek. ‘I was a dick,’ he said, ‘Sorry.’

Sherlock turned his head and John promptly kissed his mouth. Sherlock parted his lips to deepen the kiss, then hummed low and content when Mary kissed his throat on that side. He turned again to claim another kiss from her, and hummed again as John nuzzled into his neck once more.

Sherlock’s one regret in all of this, he’d discovered, was that he could only kiss one of them at a time. A regret they seemed to all share, but they made the best of it. Oh, yes they did. There was a lot of kissing just now, sometimes John and Mary, sometimes Sherlock with one or the other of them, but whoever wasn’t currently being kissed made their presence known, by pressing their lips to cheek and jaw and throat, nosed against warm skin and hair, against one and then the other, before the kissing partners changed, and the random nuzzling continued…

‘We should do it now,’ said Mary, breathless and husky, her body sprawled over Sherlock’s, just as John’s was.

John stopped suckling Sherlock’s earlobe to look at her. ‘I thought…’

‘No,’ said Mary, ‘I think _now_.’

‘What?’

John grinned at Sherlock’s imperious question. ‘We have a Christmas present for you.’

That little furrow appeared in Sherlock’s brow, the one he had when he was taken by surprise and it worried him. ‘You left something under the tree.’

‘We did,’ agreed John.

‘That’s the other present,’ said Mary.

‘We were thinking of giving you this one tomorrow afternoon, but Mary’s right. Now’s better.’

Sherlock was torn between being annoyed and being impressed they’d kept a secret from him. Then he squinted at Mary. ‘You made the arrangements.’

‘Yes.’ She grinned. It was a running joke that Sherlock knew all of John’s tells backwards, but Mary had a kind of sleight-of-mind. John often surprised Sherlock with the complexity of his personality and unpredicted responses, but it was Mary who could keep secrets.

She pushed the covers away and ducked down beside the bed. Sherlock watched her pop down, then up, but couldn’t move because John had sprawled right across Sherlock’s belly.

‘Under the bed? You put it _under the bed_?’ John sounded offended by the simplicity of it.

‘Nobody ever tidies or looks under the bed in the guest room,’ Mary said confidently.

‘She’s right,’ said Sherlock.

John smiled up at Sherlock – sneaky and delighted and full of unabashed affection. He dropped a kiss on Sherlock’s T-shirt, over his sternum, and then rose to kneel on the mattress by Sherlock’s side.

Mary held a tube in her hands.

_Thirty centimetres long, circumference of five centimetres. Plain, of the type that could be purchased in any postal agency, designed for the mailing of documents._

For a moment, Sherlock read uncertainty in Mary’s face, and saw how that sparked an answering uncertainty in John. Then John swallowed and nodded – short and sharp.

Mary held the tube out to Sherlock.

Uncertain now too, Sherlock took it.

‘You think I won’t like it,’ he said.

John seemed about to deny it, then pressed his lips together, then did that expression that was like a shrug and like a denial and like an admission and like a new truth was about to emerge from all of that as well.

‘We think you will,’ he said, ‘I think… maybe we shouldn’t have said it’s a present, really. It’s more a…’

‘A question,’ said Mary, ‘And we think you’ll say yes. But. It’s all right if… if you’d rather say no.’ Her mouth twisted in irritation at how this was going. ‘Oh, just open it!’

 _A question._ Sherlock had already begun to suspect. His heart rate had picked up. He had to work hard to keep his breathing even.

He pried open the seal.

He shook out a roll of thick paper. _Parchment._ Held in its roll with a soft red ribbon.

He shook the tube slightly. Something else clunked within it. He tipped the tube and a small velvet bag fell into his lap. He put the tube aside and picked up the pouch. Too heavy to be … ah. Yes. Not one. _Three_.

Sherlock swallowed and closed his hand over the velvet pouch, in which he could now feel three rings, very distinctly. To open the parchment he’d have to put the pouch down. To open the pouch he would have to put the parchment down. He wanted to open both. He wanted to hold both. _Dilemma._

He felt Mary’s hand on his cheek and dragged his eyes away from the parchment he held in his left hand to look at her. He felt John’s palm on his shoulder, stroking down his arm, to rest on the wrist of the hand that held the pouch. Sherlock looked down at John’s hand resting warm there.

‘My answer is yes.’

Neither had to ask how he knew, because that was a very stupid question under the circumstances.

Mary smiled at him and rubbed his cheek with her thumb and then opened the bedside drawer to take out a pen.

‘We need to sign it,’ she said.

‘It can’t be official, of course,’ said John.

‘Of course.’ Sherlock sounded a little impatient with the obvious.

John just smiled at him. ‘Not officially official, I mean. But official between us, we can do that.’

John took off his wedding ring.

Mary took off _her_ wedding ring.

She placed both on the side cupboard, then took the pouch out of Sherlock’s hands. He nearly didn’t let her take it, but that was foolish. Under the circumstances.

With both hands now free, Sherlock pulled the ribbon and the knot unravelled. He flattened the parchment onto his lap.

The calligraphy was lovely. It looked much nicer than Mary and John’s wedding certificate. It read, in its elegant script:

 _This is the declaration of the marriage between_  
_William Sherlock Scott Holmes_  
_And_  
_John Hamish Watson_  
_And_  
_Mary Elizabeth Morstan_

 _Each one to the other two_  
_In love and trust_  
_In respect and faith_

 _We will all three be true to each other_  
_Be friends to each other_  
_Cherish each other_

 _We will stand by each other_  
_And for each other_  
_And with each other_

 _The secrets of our pasts are our own to keep._  
_The challenges of our future_  
_Are our privilege to share_

_We choose each other, we three  
We choose this life together_

 

Underneath was space for three signatures.

Sherlock took the pen, frowned – Mary handed him her bedtime book and he tucked it underneath the paper for stability – and he signed the first space with a flourish.

John took the pen and signed the second. He kissed Sherlock’s cheek and beamed at Mary.

Mary, as radiant as the day that she’d married John, took the pen and signed the third space. She bent down to kiss Sherlock’s mouth, which he offered up to her, and then John’s offered lips.

They stared at the paper which had no way of binding them legally but nevertheless was a solemn vow.

Then Mary took the velvet pouch and shook the three rings it contained onto the parchment.

Sherlock easily sorted them by size. He peered at the engravings on the inside, though. Each was identical.

_WSSH <3JHW<3MEM<3_

The initials and hearts ran in a loop, meeting and going on forever.

_WSSH <3JHW<3MEM<3WSSH<3JHW<3MEM<3WSSH<3JHW<3MEM<3..._

John held Mary’s hand while Sherlock slipped her new ring onto her ring finger.

Mary held Sherlock’s hand, while John slid the largest ring over Sherlock’s finger.

Sherlock held John’s hand, while Mary placed the third new ring onto John’s finger.

‘We’ll melt the old ones down,’ said Mary, ‘And make a something for the baby, if you’re happy with that.’

Sherlock was speechless with how happy he was about that. So instead of speaking, he began the kissing again. The kissing was good. The kissing was wonderful when his throat closed from a surfeit of feeling and his tongue didn’t know how to form the words for the things that lit up inside him, bright and burning and dazzling as the sun.

But his husband and his wife knew how it was; were rendered speechless by the same passionate glory at least as often, and now instead of _I do_ made of words, there was _I do_ made of lips and tongues and hands and bodies pressed close. _I do_ that stripped their bodies bare to match their exposed hearts.


	2. The Consummation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have made their own wedding vows, the three of them. They hadn't quite planned it this way, but still, it's their wedding night. John and Mary and Sherlock try to stay quiet as they consummate their new vows in the Holmes's guest bedroom.

As weddings went, the wedding of Sherlock Holmes, John Watson and Mary Morstan had been short and perfect.

None of them had begun with the intention of having honeymoon sex in the guest bedroom of the Holmes’s substantial cottage, but once the kissing started, the sensuous touches, the yearning to be close, the desire to show in the language of the body how full of happiness and love their hearts were, honeymoon sex in the guest bedroom was inevitable.

But they tried to be quiet. It was part of the fun, part of the joy, part of the sensual intensity, part of that addiction to adrenalin they all had – _will we be found out?_ – to be mischievous and gleeful as well as passionate and lavish _while trying to keep quiet._

Pyjamas were strewn about the bedroom floor like giant confetti. The queen sized bed was maybe a little small, but who could tell with the three of them moving languid and warm in the centre of it, touching and kissing and licking and whispering. _John. Sherlock. Mary. Love you. Wife. Husband. Husbands. Love you. Oh god, I love you._

Sherlock had claimed it was chilly out of bed, but with the sheets and blankets shoved away, not a one of them was cold. Their whole room was warm with desire and the expression of that desire.

After a long time of sweet exploration of territory already well known, well loved, yet never dull, always wonderful, Mary was sitting in John’s lap, facing forward, legs splayed, skin flushed, hair in damp strands on her forehead and neck. She was smiling and rolling her hips. John cupped her breasts in his hands and nuzzled her neck while he moved, thrusting his hips in unhurried pleasure, his cock sliding into her cunt, holding – _Mary_ , he whispered – and then out.

She whimpered and pushed back, and he groaned at the sensation of her lush bottom against his abdomen and thighs. Then he groaned again, at the sensation of Sherlock’s tongue between both their legs, licking Mary’s clit, lapping down to lick John where he entered her. At the sensation of Sherlock’s unruly curls against their inner thighs.

Mary gasped. Giggled, too loudly, then again, because she was too loud, and then Sherlock was pressed against her front, kissing the giggle quiet, lapping it up with his sticky-sweet tongue. One hand cupped her breast and John’s hand with it, and together her husbands fondled her nipple, stroked the lovely curve of her, and she moaned into Sherlock’s mouth.

Then Sherlock dipped his hand between her legs and softly rubbed her clit. Dipped down to stroke, with his fingertip, John’s cock as he began to move in her again. Up again, more firmly, making circles around her swollen clit, and closer, more direct, then maddeningly away, until she was moaning into his mouth that would not stop kissing her, and she was pushing back onto her doctor husband’s cock, and forward against her genius husband’s finger, and back and forward, and back and forward. She arched her back, pressing her breasts into their hands, and whimpered.

Sherlock sucked on her lip and her tongue, he licked her tongue and all the heat of her mouth, and absorbed into himself the delicious sound of his wonderfully official-between-them wife losing herself to pleasure.

He fondled her right breast, and reached past her body, that was pressed to his, undulated against his, to bury the fingers of his other hand in his wonderfully unofficially official husband’s blond hair, down his neck, as John muffled his own little cries of pleasure against Mary’s neck.

Mary was gloriously happy, trapped between them, John’s warm skin moving against her back and bottom, Sherlock’s against her breasts and belly, John’s thick cock filling her up and Sherlock’s clever hands making her body sing, until suddenly she was bucking, shoving her hips down to fuck herself and rub herself simultaneously on her so so so so so so clever, brilliant husbands who held her close as she came in wave after exquisite wave, her head thrown back, her voice nothing but a little squeak of breathless, joyful laughter.

They both stroked her skin as she came down from the orgasm high, but John held perfectly still, and he was panting against her neck. Sherlock’s forehead had dropped onto her shoulder, his hand still in John’s hair, and he was quivering.

‘You,’she urged them, pushing at Sherlock, and then at John, ‘You, oh you, you two, you…’

John pulled out of her and she held his hand while he reached for Sherlock, and Sherlock kissed her and reached for John.

They hadn’t thought to bring lube. Mary dipped her fingers between her own legs, to the wet, slippery hollow, and shivered as she gathered her own slickness. John was on his back and Sherlock was stretched across him, and they were kissing, Sherlock still with a hand in John’s hair, but the other stroking softly between John’s legs, between the cheeks of John’s arse. One of John’s legs was trapped beneath Sherlock’s leg and thigh (and Sherlock was undulating his hips and pushing his cock into the soft skin of John’s inner thigh while still managing to not be rubbing against John’s rosy red, so so hard erection). John’s other leg was bent, foot to the mattress, splayed, and he was wriggling down against Sherlock’s spit-wet finger rubbing circles against his hole.

Mary rubbed her slick fingers there too, and gathered more of her wetness and rubbed again, around, and then in. John whimpered and pushed against her, against Sherlock.

He was close, so close, but not ready either, so John clamped a hand around the base of his cock and squeezed and said in a desperate whisper, ‘please’.

And soon after Sherlock was between his husband’s thighs, his hard cock buried in his husband’s beautiful hole and Sherlock was rocking into him, making little needy sounds he couldn’t for the life of him stop making. So John lifted his right hand and pressed his fingers to Sherlock’s lips, and Sherlock sucked them into his mouth, between his teeth, and muffled himself with John’s hand.

John was gone too, though, making hitching grunts, until Mary, grinning, pressed her hand right over his mouth. John pressed his left hand over hers, double-gagging himself, and his eyes twinkled when they weren’t glazed and lost in physical sensation.

Mary leaned her forehead against Sherlock’s shoulder so she could kiss the skin, so she could watch Sherlock’s cock sliding in and out of John’s arse, so she could keep John gagged with one hand and fondle Sherlock’s bum with the other.

So that she could, when Sherlock was getting close (it didn’t take long, not long, not long at all), she could stop squeezing that beautiful backside and instead wrap her hand around John’s shaft and stroke him, and stroke him, and stroke him, in the perfect rhythm which each of Sherlock’s thrusts…

And then John’s back was arching as he came, and Sherlock’s too, as he came, as he thrust hard and fast into John, and John pushed his whole body to meet each thrust, and then up to meet each of Mary’s strokes, and the sounds were held in tight by hands over mouths, so that all that pleasure, all that joy, reverberated all through their bodies instead of escaping, and made it all the more stupendous.

Until finally, like a gracefully collapsing star, Sherlock folded against John’s body and wriggled sideways, and Mary folded down beside him, and John, panting, laughed and turned towards Sherlock – in between them again – and John and Mary cuddled against their tall, their pretty, their clever, their precious and proper new husband, and giggled happily while Sherlock, arms curled around his husband and his wife, holding them, caught his breath.

‘Merry Christmas,’ Sherlock said at last, and grinned at the ceiling with his eyes closed, and looked like a debauched angel.

John’s naughtiest giggle emerged as he brushed his nose against Sherlock’s nipple to see what would happen. (Sherlock thrust his chest out a little so that John would do it again). ‘That’s what you got for us for Christmas? Spectacular sex in your parents’ guest bedroom?’

Mary petted Sherlock's sternum and belly with her fingertips. ‘Not that we’re complaining, but you did, didn’t you? You in fact just give us your penis for Christmas.’

‘It _is_ the gift that keeps on giving,’ said Sherlock solemnly. And then they all collapsed into giddy laughter at how perfectly ridiculous and perfectly perfect it was.

Mary was the one who cleaned them roughly down – using Sherlock’s T-shirt of course – and pulled the blankets up to their shoulders, before burrowing against Sherlock's left side. John was dozing against Sherlock's right. Sherlock seemed to be drifting off already, and smiling, which made him look young and like he'd never ever been hurt.

And that’s how they fell asleep, in a bed not quite large enough for three, all snuggled in the centre of it, warm and content and delighted, with a quiet murmur of _thank you_ and _I love you, I love you both, I love you so much_ , and, affectionately, _gift that keeps on giving, you git_ , and happy giggling and finally, finally, breaths warm and slow and sweet.


	3. The Celebration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas Day! And the most surprising thing about the day is how most of it isn't really surprising at all.

Sherlock roused sleepily to the sound of a door closing across the hall.

His old bedroom.

He closed his eyes again, feeling warm, settled, not at all alarmed. John was plastered along Sherlock’s right side, nose pressed under Sherlock’s jaw, an arm curled around Sherlock’s waist, breathing soft and steady against Sherlock’s skin. Sherlock’s right arm rested up over John’s back.

_Husband._

_Wife._ Mary had wriggled backwards against his left side, her bottom pushed against his hip, her back along his ribs. Sherlock’s arm was under her neck, bent up across her upper chest, and both her hands were curved loosely over his forearm.

It should have been uncomfortable, to be thus pinned down by two warm bodies, but for the moment Sherlock simply felt anchored. They were all safe here, at the cottage. Safe and warm, and Dad would be doing his Christmas Morning Thing of bringing up a pot of tea for…

Sherlock’s eyes flew open in alarm just as the bedroom door opened – and his gaze met his father’s.

His father smiled at him.

Sherlock, unspeaking and unmoving, watched his smiling father almost tiptoe into the room with a heavily laden tray. Two teapots. Three cups. _One teapot and cup hastily added to the tray intended for John and Mary. Dad is bringing all three of us our Christmas morning cup of tea. Well of course, he could see I wasn’t in the room across the hall._

Mr Holmes Senior’s warm and happy smile did not dissipate in the slightest as he quietly went to John’s side of the bed and slipped the tray onto it, with only the slightest rattle of crockery, the faintest _splish_ of water shifting in the pots.

Sherlock’s father stood back and beamed at the sleepy occupants of the crowded bed.

Sherlock stared at his father’s beaming face like a very thinky rabbit caught in the headlights.

Sherlock’s Dad gave Sherlock a big two thumbs up, beamed even harder, and waggled his eyebrows a bit.

Sherlock, not knowing quite what was expected of him, and with his arms encumbered with lovers (partners; no – spouses; no - _spice_!) smiled a bit too brightly back and managed to give his Dad a thumbs-up in reply with his right arm.

Sherlock’s Dad grinned even harder, nodded – his expression was unmistakably telegraphing _Oh, well done, son!_ – and tip-toed out of the room again. He closed the door very softly behind him.

Sherlock stared at the closed door and wondered what was going on downstairs.

‘Did your Dad just give you two thumbs up?’ asked John.

Sherlock suppressed a sigh. Of course John was awake. So was Mary, who was very much awake-still, not sleeping-still. OF course they were all awake. An assassin, a soldier and a detective? _Of course_ they’d all woken up when the door opened.

‘Yes,’ said Sherlock, because there was nothing else to say.

On his left, Mary started to giggle. She was giggling so hard her body was curled around Sherlock’s arm and hand.

Sherlock was in the process of staring at her with a ‘this is not funny’ glare, when John began to giggle.

‘You gave him a thumbs up back, didn’t you?’ said John.

Sherlock transferred the glare to John, who was looking at him with that exaggerated, wide-eyed questioning face he did when he already knew the answer.

‘Yes. It seemed the thing to do.’

Mary’s giggles burst into a howl of laughter, and John shook with an answering whole-body giggle, and Sherlock’s mortification couldn’t survive the double onslaught of hilarity. In moments they were all three in mass hysterics.

*

At that moment, what was happening downstairs was that Mr Holmes was beaming his beaming smile upon his clever wife, who sat at the table shelling peas.

‘You were quite right, dear. It's the three of them together. They look so happy. Sherlock, especially. He looks…’ Mr Holmes considered the correct word for the look on his son’s face – well, besides that charming look of alarm that had greeted him. Underneath that was… ‘At peace.’ He wasn’t sure that’s quite what he meant, but at the same time he was quite certain that that’s what he meant.

His dear wife understood perfectly. She’d known almost from the moment the three of them had arrived at the cottage yesterday, not only from the looks and smiles and touches, but from her son’s whole expression and body language. There was a tension that had left him; a readiness to smile easily, the way he did not draw away from those fleeting touches of Mary and John’s fingers to his hands and elbow and thighs. Dear things, thinking they were being so subtle.

She’d never seen her odd little duck of a boy be properly happy before. It was _wonderful._

Of course, the faint sound late last night of bedroom doors opening and closing, followed by muffled laughter, the baritone, tenor and alto tones combining in a beautiful sound, and then the quiet but unmistakable rhythmic squeak of the bed, had been a perfect confirmation.

Mrs Holmes’s eyes twinkled at Mr Holmes, who twinkled right back. He bent to whisper to his wife – the news was too wonderful for a normal kitchen voice – ‘They were _cuddling_ him, dear. And he wasn’t just _letting_ them. He was cuddling back.’

It was like he’d witnessed his own personal Christmas miracle.

Mycroft stepped into the kitchen, fully dressed already. For a second Christmas Miracle, he wasn’t in a suit, but jeans and a relatively subtle Christmas jumper. Which his parents had bought for him. So he wore it.

‘Ah, you’ve finally caught onto the threesome, have you?’

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it, to see him so happy?’ Mr Holmes was beaming again.

Mrs Holmes had risen to kiss her elder son good morning, so that when Mycroft replied with a snarky, ‘Oh yes. My brother. So lovable it takes two people to do it properly’, she was in easy striking distance to smack him on the back of the head.

‘Be nice, Mike.’

‘Mycroft,’ he grumbled, patting his hair back into place, ‘You chose it, the least you can do is to use it.’

Mrs Holmes patted his left cheek and kissed his right. ‘You’ve been saying that since you were three. The idea was never to make you stick to your grandfather’s name.’

‘Nevertheless.’

Mr Holmes laughed fondly. ‘You’ve been saying that since you were three, too.’

Mycroft sighed. ‘Do you need a hand with breakfast?’

‘Your father has that under control,’ said his mother, ‘You can keep on shelling the peas.’

Mycroft sat elegantly in the chair his mother had vacated and began, elegantly, to shell peas.

Mr Holmes leaned close to his elder son, patted his shoulder and said, ‘Next year, you should bring that nice equerry along,’ he said encouragingly, ‘Or that policeman fellow your mother says you’re pining about. Or both!’

Mycroft sighed again, closed his eyes, and kept on shelling peas while his father wandered over to the bench, humming _Feliz Navidad,_ to prepare the Christmas Breakfast.

*

Any sense of trepidation the newlywed trio felt as they headed down to breakfast was replaced with an awkward kind of happy when Mrs Holmes greeted them, kissed them all on the cheek in turn and said, ‘It’s so nice to have a daughter-in-law, as well as a son-in-law. Sherlock never did do things by halves. You could have told us before you came, and we’d have put you in the one room from the start. Father and I thought you wanted to keep it secret.’

Sherlock’s still mildly mortified expression was met with a twinkling eye and a ruffle of his curly head. ‘I’m your mother dear, of course I knew.’

Sherlock intended to protest against the alleged intuitive wisdom of mothers, but both his husband and his wife pinched his bottom warningly – or perhaps just because they liked to pinch his bottom (this was an established fact) and he only responded by going to help his father with the breakfast. Porridge, bacon and eggs, toast, jam. Simple enough, intended to keep everyone warm and going until the big Christmas Lunch.

Sherlock sliced bread. With his left hand.

Sherlock stole a few shelled peas to eat. With his left hand.

Sherlock made fresh tea and placed a delicate china cup in front of his mother. With his left hand.

When everyone sat down to breakfast, he sat between John and Mary and waved his hands around as he spoke, being particularly emphatic with his left hand. His knife flashed dangerously near his husband’s face, and John didn’t flinch at all; and Sherlock sometimes jabbed his fork in emphatic speech somewhat too near his wife’s hands, and she only smiled serenely and asked for the butter.

Everybody saw the ring. Nobody said anything about the ring.

Finally, MR Holmes took pity on him, poured glasses of champagne for everyone and raised a toast: ‘To Happy Families, of every kind’.

Mycroft snorted. His father kicked his ankle under the table. Mycroft raised his glass.

‘To Sherlock and his spouses.’

‘I prefer the plural “spice”,’ said Sherlock haughtily.

John and Mary both awkward-laughed, and then just laughed as they caught each other’s eye, and simultaneously kissed Sherlock on either cheek.

‘All right,’ said John, ‘Spice is is. I have two excellent spice.’

‘Instant in-laws!’ cheered Mr Holmes, ‘It’s lovely.’

Mrs Holmes’s cheeks dimpled at the way her littlest boy’s eyes lit up and he kept on smiling at his … _spice_ , even though he pretended to be annoyed at all the fuss.

 

*

In the early evening, stuffed full of turkey and Christmas pudding, the Holmeses sat around the television set. Everyone was wearing Christmas jumpers of varying levels of awfulness, but when your mother (and new mother-in-law) has given you a Christmas jumper as a gift, you wear the damned thing.

Actually, John quite liked his, and Mary’s, and Sherlock’s. Sherlock’s had an elegant reindeer design, Mary’s a Robin Redbreast and his own a bulldog wearing a Christmas hat. Even better was Mycroft’s Christmas pudding, which had made Sherlock laugh until he was crying. Mr Holmes wore the snowman and Mrs Holmes had a really very discreet snowflake pattern.

Too full to do anything except watch the Christmas Specials, the whole extended family sipped sherry and watched the Queen’s Speech.

‘She does seem a lovely person,’ observed Mr Holmes.

‘Yes, she’s very gracious,’ agreed Mycroft.

‘Sometimes she lets him wear the tiara for a bit, when he’s been especially useful,’ said Sherlock, and sniggered.

His mother, walking past with a fresh mug of tea, paused to smack him lightly on the back of the head. ‘Be nice to your brother, Sherlock, it’s Christmas.’

Mycroft grinned smugly.

‘When are you due?’ asked Mr Holmes, glancing at Mary and taking another handful of nuts even though he was technically full to the Plimsoll line.

‘June,’ said Mary, instinctively putting a hand over her stomach.

‘Spring baby,’ said Mr Holmes, smiling.

‘Who’s the father?’ asked Mycroft.

‘We both are,’ said John.

‘I mean…’

‘ _We both are_ ,’ John repeated, quellingly, ‘Whatever the DNA. My step-mum didn’t give me DNA. She was still my mother.’

‘Two dads,’ said Mr Holmes, nodding, ‘If your little one is anything like our pair, two dads and a mum might nearly be enough to keep up with them.’

*

As the credits on the Doctor Who special rolled and the next show was advertised, this was the tableau:

Mr Holmes, asleep in his armchair, the bowl of nuts on his lap.

John at one end of the sofa, his head resting on the cushioned back of it, the fingers of one hand wrapped around Sherlock’s ankles, where he’d been sort of tickling Sherlock’s ankles until he fell asleep. The other hand was entwined with Mary’s fingers.

Mary at the other end of the sofa, also asleep, holding John’s hand and, with Sherlock’s head in her lap, the fingers of her other hand in Sherlock’s hair.

Sherlock stretched out between them, sleeping but not dreamlessly. (He dreamed he was floating. It was nice.)

Mycroft in another armchair, pretending to be dozing. He was not dozing. He was looking at his little brother – at the way the former assassin still wore the expression she’d had before she fell asleep, looking upon Sherlock as though he were adorable; and at the way the army doctor’s fingers flexed minutely over Sherlock’s ankle, as though even in sleep he had to make sure that Sherlock was near; and at the way Sherlock looked like he used to look, when he was little – a little boy with a riot of curls, cheeks flushed pink with his day’s adventures, artlessly tranquil.

Mrs Holmes in her armchair, sipping tea, watching her eldest son pretend to not be watching her youngest.

‘He has a larger heart than you ever gave him credit for,’ Mrs Holmes said softly to Mycroft.

Mycroft looked sharply up at his mother.

‘As do you,’ she said. ‘I know you think it’s dangerous to love, Mike. Mycroft. But everything is dangerous. We know that.’

Mycroft looked back at Sherlock, at the ring on his little brother’s left hand, which rested against Sherlock’s Christmas-lunch-rounded belly. When he snuffled in his sleep (and there was the merest hint of distress in the sound, the seed of a nightmare buried deep in it) John’s fingers tightened on Sherlock’s ankle; Mary’s fingers moved in his hair, and instantly Sherlock settled.

 _In the new year_ , thought Mycroft. _I will call the equerry in the new year. Or the policeman. Or both._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The family's Christmas Jumpers.  
> 


End file.
